


Awakened

by ASadHermitStory



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: First Meetings, Gen, Joining the Rebellion, Pre-Canon, Tatooine (Star Wars)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-04
Updated: 2019-05-04
Packaged: 2020-01-13 07:58:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18464761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ASadHermitStory/pseuds/ASadHermitStory
Summary: “Would you care for some tea? It will help with the hangover.”





	Awakened

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Penknife](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Penknife/gifts).



“Hey! You dead, or are you just sleeping?”

No, he wasn’t dead, and he wasn’t sleeping either. He was miserably hungover.

Cassian Andor groaned and tried to remember where he was. Some backwater planet, he reckoned, where the cheap booze was abundant and the awkward personal questions were few. Some backwater planet that had nothing to do with his past, which was kind of the point.

Oh right. Tatooine. The backwater planet was called Tatooine, and it was far, very far indeed, from the people and places which haunted his past.

“The floor needs mopping, and you’re in the way. Time to go.”

Cassian groaned again and tried to sit up. The dizziness knocked him back flat. Not good. Just how much _did_ he have to drink anyway?

“Groak, please remove this drunkard from the premises of my cantina.”

Cassian groaned a third time as the meaty paws of Gamorrean hired muscle picked him up by the shoulders and tossed him bodily out onto the hot, dusty street. Even this early in the morning, the white light of the binary suns was blinding. Cassian squeezed his eyes shut against the pain lancing through his skull and assumed a fetal position. He could sleep his hangover off on the street just as easily as the cantina floor—

“The streets of Mos Eisley aren’t meant for sleeping, you know.” A new voice remarked from somewhere above him, incongruously posh.

“Leave me alone,” Cassian grunted. He could taste sand in his mouth when he spoke, feel the grit in his teeth, but he didn’t care.

“I do believe you would find the bed of an inn to be more amenable…”

Cassian felt himself being lifted off the ground again, albeit more gently this time. Being vertical was just too much effort, however, and the heat and the dizziness overwhelmed him immediately. He remembered nothing more.

* * *

“Would you care for some tea? It will help with the hangover.”

The aging stranger who’d introduced himself as Ben held out a held out one of the inn’s ceramic cups to Cassian. The liquid inside was fragrant and steaming.

Cassian took the cup warily. He recognized an ex-soldier with an ulterior motive when he saw one. “Which side did you fight on?” he asked suspiciously. He’d come of age fighting for the Separatists; old habits of tribal loyalty were hard to discard—even, or perhaps especially, when one was trying hard to do precisely that.

But Ben merely shrugged. He didn’t even try to deny it. “Does it matter? None of us won.”

Okay, Ben did have a point. No one was better off anywhere. Not the ordinary folk, anyway. The only real victor of the Clone Wars had been Palpatine, who’d been elevated to the position of Emperor-for-life. “True enough,” Cassian admitted. He took a tentative sip of the tea. It was tasty, surprisingly so, and soothing, as Ben had promised. “So why am I here? What do you want from me?”

Ben shrugged again. “You’re not from around here. Your clothes make that quite clear. I know what it’s like to be alone on Tatooine and thought you could use a friend.”

A “friend”…? That was bantha-poodoo. Cassian regarded Ben with even more suspicion than previously. Initially he’d taken Ben for a very old man, but it seemed that the desert had aged him prematurely. He wasn’t as old as all that, which raised all manner of new and irksome questions about the nature of his interest in Cassian—

“I know what it’s like to be alone,” Ben repeated, interrupting Cassian’s unpleasant thoughts before they could take complete shape, “and I’m sorry to say that I can’t help you with that. However, I do know that a renewed sense of purpose could make the loneliness less crushing.”

“I’m not—” Cassian started.

Ben’s eyebrows lifted; Cassian wasn’t fooling anyone. “If I’m wrong, then by all means, the cantinas are open for business, and Mos Eisley’s streets are still available for sleeping on. Or…” Ben held out a scrap of flimsi. “…you can take this.”

Cassian stared at Ben. The room was so quiet that he could hear his own heart beating. He took the flimsi. The only thing on it was the handwritten word “Fulcrum” and a series of starmap coordinates. The penmanship was neat. He didn’t recognize the location. “What _is_ this?” he asked.

Ben shrugged a third time. “Renewed sense of purpose for someone who isn’t quite ready to stop fighting the good fight yet.” Ben rose from his seat, smoothed out his threadbare, roughspun robes, and pulled the hood of his cloak over his head. He bowed slightly at Cassian. “And now, I’m afraid I must leave you to attend to my own purpose. A good day to you.”

Cassian departed the inn less than an hour after Ben. He headed, not to another cantina, but rather straight to the spaceport. Somehow, he was going to have to hire reliable transport offworld.

He wasn’t certain where this journey would take him, but at least he wasn’t asleep anymore.


End file.
